Ross Perot Launches Media Blitz

March 23, 1996|By From Tribune News Services

WASHINGTON — Four years after he turned the presidential race upside down, Dallas billionaire Ross Perot appears to be retracing his steps with a blitz of media interviews and speeches across the country.

On Friday night he rounded out a week in which he has been sounding increasingly like a candidate by returning to a favorite forum--CNN's "Larry King Live," where he had first announced his intentions to run for president on Feb. 20, 1992.

This time, though, Perot seemed to downplay personal ambitions.

"We don't in any way want this to be focused on any individual, and certainly not me," Perot told King.

But at the end of the show, King said, "I'll say this on a personal note, if it ain't about you, this hour was about something."

Throughout the session Perot sought to steer the talk to the government's failure to eliminate the federal deficit or reform major entitlement programs, such as Medicaid and welfare.

"We're like a person that's bleeding arterially," he said. "We've got to stop the bleeding."

Earlier Perot spokeswoman Sharon Holman said not to expect any announcements beyond what Perot has been saying most of the week -- that he may run, but only if called by his followers.

In a string of interviews this week, beginning Tuesday as Sen. Bob Dole was clinching the GOP nomination, Perot has said he would run for president if that's what the Reform Party -- which he created -- wants and if no other independent candidate steps forward.

Four years ago, Perot's announcement on the King show received scarce national attention -- at first. But by April 1992, he was registering a shade over 25 percent in public opinion polls. By late May, he briefly was ahead of both President George Bush and Democratic front-runner Bill Clinton in the polls.

Elsewhere Friday, Dole, campaigning in California, attacked President Clinton's record on illegal immigration and national security, and promised to double the nation's fleet of B-2 Stealth bombers.

On a visit to the U.S. border with Mexico, the senator also backed a measure approved by the House of Representatives this week that would allow states to deny public education to the children of illegal immigrants.

"The governor of the state of California ought to have the option to deny free public education to those in our country illegally," Dole said.

Dole began a three-day campaign swing in California by visiting the Northrop Grumman plant at Pico Rivera, south of Los Angeles, where the Stealth bomber is built.

He told an enthusiastic crowd that, if elected president, he would keep building more of the aircraft.

The U.S. now has 20 of the aircraft, and the Clinton administration this week decided to spend $493 million to upgrade a test model to operational status instead of retiring it, bringing the total to 21.